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This blog contains posts that share five interesting facts about one of IBM's products or services. This blog is brought to you by IBM Redbooks and is maintained by Martin Keen (@MartinRTP) and James Pistilli.

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5 Things to Know About Big Data at Rest

As world activities become more integrated, the rate of our data growth has been increasing exponentially. This data explosion is making current data management methods inadequate. People are using the term big data to describe this latest industry trend. IBM is preparing the next generation of technology to meet these data management challenges.

Here are 5 things to know about big data at rest:

1. Big data is divided into “data at rest” and “data in motion.”

Data at rest is a snapshot of the information that is collected and stored, ready to be analyzed for decision-making. For example, a video camera can collect 1.75 terabytes (TB) of data per day or 2.52 petabytes (PB) per year. There are many “smart analytics” systems available to process this data, including IBM BigInsights, which we cover in this blog. Data in motion is the process of analyzing data on the fly without storing it. Systems to analyze this data include IBM Streams, which we will cover in another blog.

2. Data at rest can be processed by inexpensive systems.

While there are expensive systems that competently process data at rest, you can also choose to process it by spreading it across a number of less expensive systems. This is the principle of Hadoop, which is the basis of the IBM BigInsights solution. It consists of many connected computers, called data nodes.

3. IBM BigInsights allows for scalability and failover.

Because there are many nodes, if one fails its work can be passed to another node. And it is easy to add another node (or five or more) to the system, creating scalability.

4. IBM BigInsights offers enterprise class functionality and security

Even though the solution is inexpensive, BigInsights was designed with business needs in mind. For this reason, in addition to the built-in redundancy that is supplied by Hadoop, there are hardware options to ensure continuity. To enhance security, BigInsights provides built-in features that can be configured during the installation process.

The ability to guarantee application availability and quality of service

Ensured responsiveness for interactive workloads

Simplified management by using a single management layer for multiple clients and workloads

If someone says they like your product, that is a good thing. But what is that really worth? What actions would you take upon learning this information? How much would you pay to learn this? To really understand what actions you might consider taking, you need a deeper level of understanding, in context, and within a period where responding makes business sense. That is why big data is getting the attention it is, and that is why IBM offers its BigInsights solution to analyze that data.